Have you ever found yourself in a situation needing to make small talk about the weather? How about needing to know the forecast for the next day? We’ve got you covered! In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know to talk about the weather in French, including French weather vocabulary and weather expressions in French.

We’ll also break down the grammatical rules for using certain words, and we’ll cover vocabulary for weather occurrences all over the French-speaking world, from Canada to France to Senegal. Let’s go!

Asking about the weather in French

First and foremost, you may hear or need to ask a question about the weather. Here are the most common weather questions in French.

• Quel temps fait-il? – What’s the weather like?

• Quelle est la température dehors? – What is the temperature outside?

• Combien de degrés fait-il? – How many degrees is it?

• Quelles sont les prévisions pour demain? – What is the forecast for tomorrow?

We’ve provided these questions in the present tense, though of course you can always ask about the weather in the future as well. To ask about the weather in the near future, you can use le futur proche (conjugated form of aller plus an infinitive) instead. To ask about the distant future, use the futur simple.

• Quel temps va-t-il faire demain ? – What is the weather going to be like tomorrow?

• Combien de degrés fera-t-il en avril ? – How many degrees will it be in April?

Note that in all of these questions we used inversion, including the use of the t euphonique in the last two questions above. We go into detail on this sentence structure in our post about how to form questions in French.

Weather vocabulary in French

Now that we can ask about the weather in French, let’s get into how to respond. In the following sections, we’ll break down our French weather vocabulary by grammatical category and weather type.

We’ll start off with several sections of nouns you’ll hear in a French weather forecast, from general meteorological terms down to detailed vocab for different types of precipitation. Then we’ll move on to adjectives for talking about weather in French, and finally on to specific weather-related verbs.

Taken together, all of these weather expressions in French will be helpful when watching a weather report or when discussing general weather events.

Since timing is a major factor when talking about the forecast, we’ll point you to our posts on the months and seasons in French, the days of the week in French, and how to tell time in French.

French weather nouns: General meteorology

French weather nouns: Sun and Sky

French weather nouns: Wind

French weather nouns: Rain

French weather nouns: Frozen precipitation

French weather nouns: Fog

French weather nouns: Extreme weather

French weather adjectives

Now that we’ve covered the various nouns to describe the weather in French, let’s learn some useful adjectives we can use in our weather expressions in French.

As with other adjectives, these will need to agree in gender and number with the nouns they modify. We include both masculine and feminine versions of each one.

For the most part, these adjectives can be used to modify le temps (the weather) or la journée (the day), as well as the specific weather phenomenon from the vocab lists above. We can also use them with the phrase c’est or il fait to say “It is + adjective”.

French sky adjectives

Let’s start with our French weather adjectives to describe the level of brightness outside.

• Le soleil est passé derrière les nuages. C’est sombre ! – The sun passed behind the clouds. It’s dark outside!

• Il est trop brumeux ce matin. Attendons d’avoir un ciel dégagé avant de faire la randonnée. – It’s too foggy this morning. Let’s wait to have a clearer sky before doing the hike.

French temperature adjectives

Next, let’s learn some adjectives to talk about the temperature in French.

• Il fait très froid aujourd’hui: environ moins vingt degrés Celsius ! – It’s very cold today: around minus twenty degrees Celsius!

French precipitation adjectives

Finally, here are some adjectives to talk about precipitation in French.

• Suite à une semaine neigeuse, ma maison est complétement enneigée. – After a snowy week, my house is completely snowed-in.

French weather verbs

With all the nouns and adjectives out of the way, we’re ready to learn the specific verbs used to talk about the weather in French.

Whereas in English you usually use weather words with the progressive tense (“it is hailing,” “the wind is blowing”), we frequently use the simple present tense in French (equivalent to “it hails,” “the wind blows.”)

In addition, whereas you use the impersonal pronoun it with many weather verbs in English, in French we use the impersonal pronoun il (“il neige – it is snowing,” “il bruine – it is drizzling”). Many of these verbs can nonetheless be used with other specific subjects than il, many of which we saw in our previous sections on French weather nouns (“le soleil brille – the sun is shining,” “le vent souffle – the wind is blowing”)

• Il pleuvait à verse, et je n’avais pas de parapluie. J’étais trempée jusqu’aux os ! – It was pouring rain, and I didn’t have an umbrella. I was soaked to the bone!

• La température baisse, et il gèle. – The temperature is falling, and it’s freezing over.

French weather expressions

Now that we’ve seen all the vocab, let’s just wrap up with a handful of the most common weather expressions in French. We’ve covered a lot of variety in the rest of the post, but in most contexts, these common weather expressions are the ones you’ll use and hear the most!

Remember that we usually just use the impersonal pronoun il to talk about the weather, so il here always translates as it rather than he. By the same token we say il fait… to say it’s… out so although the English versions might be applicable to other contexts, with il fait… we’re pretty much always talking about the weather in French.

Of course, we can also talk about the weather in the past or the future. Here are some examples, along with links to our posts on the specific tenses.

For talking about the weather a while ago, or repetitive weather, we use the imparfait.

• Il neigeait beaucoup pendant tout l’hiver, et puis en avril il pleuvait à tous les jours. – It snowed a lot all winter long, and then in April it rained every day.

For talking about a specific weather event that began and finished, we can use the passé composé.

• Comme il a plu pendant trois jours avec des températures juste au-dessous de zéro, la région a essuyé un verglas historique en début 1998. – As it rained for three days with temperatures just below zero, the region suffered a historic ice storm in early 1998.

For weather that’s bound to happen pretty soon, we generally use the futur proche.

• Le soleil brille. Je pense qu’il va faire chaud et que la neige va fondre. – The sun is shining. I think that it’ll be warm out and the snow will melt.

For our weather predictions further in the future, we can use the futur simple.

• En juin, il fera enfin beau. – In June, the weather will finally be beautiful.

Conclusion: Weather expressions in French

In today’s post we introduced a huge variety of French weather vocabulary. We started out with the fundamental questions for asking “how’s the weather?” in French, before diving into our big lists of French weather vocab. From forecasts, to the various types of weather, to weather adjectives, to weather verbs, we learned all the vocab to describe the weather in French.

In the process, we covered the fundamentals of how to form weather expressions in French, discussing when to use the different tenses as well as how to use the impersonal pronoun il or il fait to say it’s… or it’s… out.

With all that, if you want to make small talk, if you need to check the weather for a vacation destination, or even if you’re thinking of studying meteorology, you now have a solid foundation of French weather terms to work with!